Laurie Anderson’s Mind-Blowing Performance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Waiting for the Barbarians” & “Ithaca”

in Music, Poetry | January 3rd, 2025


In the video above, Lau­rie Ander­son describes C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians” as being “set in ancient Rome.” That’s a rea­son­able inter­pre­ta­tion, giv­en that it con­tains an emper­or, sen­a­tors, and ora­tors, though Cavafy him­self said that none of them are nec­es­sar­i­ly Roman. The uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion the poem describes, in which a state’s elite turn out in their fin­ery despite hav­ing noth­ing to do but await the tit­u­lar bar­bar­ian inva­sion, cer­tain­ly has­n’t been lost on its inter­preters. J. M. Coet­zee, for exam­ple, set his nov­el Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians on the edge of an unnamed “Empire.”

Ander­son also men­tions think­ing, while con­sid­er­ing the poem’s evo­ca­tion of gov­ern­ment dead­lock, “Hang on, this sounds famil­iar” — and none can deny that com­par­isons between the Unit­ed States and the declin­ing Roman Empire have been in the air late­ly. That, in part, inspired the per­for­mance that fol­lows, in which Ander­son and a ver­i­ta­ble Greek cho­rus inter­pret both “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians,” which Cavafy wrote in 1904, and the Odyssey-based “Itha­ca” (which you can also hear read by Sean Con­nery with a Van­ge­lis score) from sev­en years lat­er. “Itha­ca” is Cavafy’s best-known work, thanks not least to its being read at the funer­al of for­mer first lady of the Unit­ed States Jacque­line Kennedy Onas­sis.

It was, in fact, the Alexan­der S. Onas­sis Foun­da­tion, estab­lished by Aris­to­tle Onas­sis in the name of his late son, that spon­sored this event, which took place in New York City’s Saint Thomas Church in Novem­ber of 2023. The occa­sion was the open­ing of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, on whose web­site clas­si­cist Gre­go­ry Jus­da­nis declares that the poet­’s “great­ness lies in his tal­ent to pre­dict our own world one hun­dred years ago.” Cavafy might well have under­stood that some polit­i­cal con­di­tions are inevitable, but he could­n’t have known how Ander­son­’s per­for­mance of his words, in Eng­lish trans­la­tion with the right instru­men­tal and elec­tron­ic back­ing, would sound like some­thing right out of her Big Sci­ence era.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Lau­rie Ander­son Read from The Tibetan Book of the Dead on New Album Songs from the Bar­do

Watch Lau­rie Anderson’s Hyp­not­ic Har­vard Lec­ture Series on Poet­ry, Med­i­ta­tion, Death, New York & More

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Music of Van­ge­lis

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” Performed by a Choir of 4,000 Singers

in Music | January 3rd, 2025

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell), and Pat­ti Smith’s “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” In their lat­est video, they revis­it an old favorite: Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah,” a song released on the 1984 album Var­i­ous Posi­tions. Orig­i­nal­ly over­looked, Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” has since become deeply woven into our cul­tur­al fab­ric. Over the past 40 years, some 300 musi­cians have cov­ered “Hal­lelu­jah,” with Jeff Buck­ley offer­ing per­haps the most cel­e­brat­ed ver­sion. Above, you can watch 4,000 singers come togeth­er and pay their own trib­ute to the song. This per­for­mance took place last year at the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre in Ottawa, Cana­da. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” Played on Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to 6th Cen­tu­ry

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Trib­ute to Sinéad O’Connor & Per­forms “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

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The Scene That Reveals the Beauty of Classic Hollywood Cinema

in Film | January 2nd, 2025

1939 is wide­ly con­sid­ered the great­est year in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry. Back then, writes 1939: The Year in Movies author Tom Flan­nery, the so-called “Big Eight” major Amer­i­can stu­dios “had a com­bined 590 actors, 114 direc­tors and 340 writ­ers under con­tract, each of whom worked an eight-hour shift every week­day,” plus half a day on Sat­ur­day. “It took an aver­age of 22 days to shoot a movie, at an aver­age cost of $300,000.” Annu­al gross­es exceed­ing $700 mil­lion “made it eas­i­er to take a chance on ‘risky’ or com­mer­cial­ly untest­ed mate­r­i­al.” From this indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment came forth one new fea­ture for every sin­gle day of the year, includ­ing Gone With the Wind, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, Stage­coach, and Young Mr. Lin­coln.

There’s one prob­lem with this fram­ing: The Philadel­phia Sto­ry did­n’t come out until 1940. In his new video above, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, uses that cel­e­brat­ed pic­ture — and in fact, just one of its scenes in par­tic­u­lar — to reveal the com­mer­cial-artis­tic genius of old Hol­ly­wood.

This was not, we must note, an indi­vid­ual genius: “We’re used to think­ing about movies as the vision of one per­son, an auteur direc­tor, but the stu­dio sys­tem of Hol­ly­wood’s gold­en age did­n’t real­ly work like that.” Despite the tal­ent of George Cukor, who went on to direct A Star Is Born and My Fair Lady, “there’s real­ly no auteur here, but rather a col­lec­tion of top-tier artists and crafts­men com­ing togeth­er to real­ize a great sto­ry and ele­vate great per­for­mances,” all of who make impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to the scene exam­ined here.

The col­lab­o­ra­tors iden­ti­fied by Puschak include cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Joseph Rut­ten­berg, art direc­tor Cedric Gib­bons (design­er of the Oscar stat­uette), and cos­tume design­er Adri­an Green­berg (known monony­mous­ly as Adri­an). Nor can he ignore the work of the film’s three prin­ci­pal per­form­ers, a cer­tain Cary Grant, James Stew­art, and Katharine Hep­burn. It may have been Stew­art who won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Actor for The Philadel­phia Sto­ry, but it was Hep­burn who ulti­mate­ly gained the most: hav­ing been sad­dled with a rep­u­ta­tion as “box-office poi­son” in the thir­ties due to her famous­ly cold screen pres­ence, she seized the chance to por­tray a char­ac­ter who suf­fers for sim­i­lar qual­i­ties of per­son­al­i­ty and is ulti­mate­ly redeemed. She got her come­back — and we have a shim­mer­ing, wit­ty mon­u­ment to the most gold­en of Hol­ly­wood’s ages.

Relat­ed con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Clas­sic Movies: From Cit­i­zen Kane and Ver­ti­go to Lawrence of Ara­bia and Gone with the Wind

Every Frame a Paint­ing Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sus­tained Two-Shot Van­ished from Movies

When a Mod­ern Direc­tor Makes a Fake Old Movie: A Video Essay on David Fincher’s Mank

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Famous Architects Dress as Their Famous New York City Buildings (1931)

in Architecture, Photography | January 1st, 2025

On Jan­u­ary 13, 1931, the Soci­ety of Beaux-Arts Archi­tects held a ball at the Hotel Astor in New York City. Accord­ing to an adver­tise­ment for the event, any­one who paid $15 per tick­et (big mon­ey dur­ing the Depres­sion) could see a “hilar­i­ous mod­ern art exhi­bi­tion” and things “mod­ernistic, futur­is­tic, cubis­tic, altru­is­tic, mys­tic, archi­tis­tic and fem­i­nis­tic.” Atten­dees also got to wit­ness more than 20 famous archi­tects dressed as build­ings they had designed—buildings that would become fix­tures of the New York City sky­line.

In the pic­ture above, we have from left to right: A. Stew­art Walk­er as the Fuller Build­ing (1929), Leonard Schultze as the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria Hotel (1931), Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Build­ing (1930), William Van Alen as the Chrysler Build­ing (1930), Ralph Walk­er as 1 Wall Street (1931), D.E. Ward as the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tow­er and Joseph H. Freed­lan­der as the Muse­um of the City of New York (1930).

A 2006 arti­cle in The New York Times notes that the event, now con­sid­ered “one of the most spec­tac­u­lar par­ties of the last cen­tu­ry,” was cov­ered by WABC radio. A few pho­tographs remain, like the one above. As does a tan­ta­liz­ing short bit of video.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via NYT

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Icon­ic New York City Muse­ums: the Met, MoMA, Guggen­heim & Frick

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

An Immer­sive, Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of New York City’s Icon­ic Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library–“Hidden Details” and All

 

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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Early Hitchcock Films, Tintin and Popeye Cartoons & More

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Law, Music | January 1st, 2025

Each Pub­lic Domain Day seems to bring us a rich­er crop of copy­right-lib­er­at­ed books, plays, films, musi­cal com­po­si­tions, sound record­ings, works of art, and oth­er pieces of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. This year hap­pens to be an espe­cial­ly notable one for con­nois­seurs of Bel­gian cul­ture. Among the char­ac­ters enter­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic domain, we find a cer­tain boy reporter named Tintin, who first appeared — along with his faith­ful pup Milou, or in Eng­lish, Snowy — in the Jan­u­ary 10th, 1929 issue of Le Petit Vingtième, the chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment of the news­pa­per Le Vingtième Siè­cle.

Now, here in le vingt-et-unième-siè­cle, that first ver­sion of Tintin can be rein­vent­ed in any man­ner one can imag­ine — at least in the Unit­ed States. In the Euro­pean Union, as the Duke Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain direc­tors Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle note in their Pub­lic Domain Day blog post for this year, that Tintin remains under copy­right until 2054, a date based on his cre­ator Hergé hav­ing died in 1983. The thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can com­ic-strip hero Pop­eye also made his debut in 1929, but as Jenk­ins and Boyle has­ten to add, while that “Pop­eye 1.0 had super­hu­man capa­bil­i­ties, he did not derive them from eat­ing spinach until 1931.” Even so, “it appears that the copy­right in this 1931 com­ic strip was not renewed — if this is true, Popeye’s spinach-fueled strength is already in the pub­lic domain.”

This year also brings a devel­op­ment in a sim­i­lar mat­ter of detail relat­ed to no less a car­toon icon than Mick­ey Mouse: last year freed the first ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse, his riv­er-nav­i­gat­ing, farm-ani­mal-bash­ing Steam­boat Willie incar­na­tion. “In 2025 we wel­come a dozen new Mick­ey Mouse films from 1929,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle, “Mick­ey speaks his first words – ‘Hot dogs! Hot dogs!’ – and debuts his famil­iar white gloves. That ver­sion of Mick­ey is now offi­cial­ly in the pub­lic domain.”

This Pub­lic Domain Day also brings us lit­er­ary works like Faulkn­er’s The Sound and the Fury, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (as well as detec­tive nov­els from Agatha Christie and the pseu­do­ny­mous Ellery Queen, once the biggest mys­tery writer in Amer­i­ca); the first sound films by Alfred Hitch­cock, John Ford, and the Marx Broth­ers; musi­cal com­po­si­tions like “Sin­gin’ in the Rain,” Gersh­win’s An Amer­i­can in Paris, and Rav­el’s Boléro; actu­al record­ings of Rhap­sody in Blue and “It Had To Be You”; and Sur­re­al­ist works of art by Sal­vador Dalí and — pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion into their copy­right sta­tus — per­haps even René Magritte, whose L’empire des lumières just sold for a record $121 mil­lion. Who knows? 2025 could be the year we all look to Bel­gium for inspi­ra­tion.

For more on what’s enter­ing the pub­lic domain today, vis­it this Duke Uni­ver­si­ty web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

An Intro­duc­tion to René Magritte, and How the Bel­gian Artist Used an Ordi­nary Style to Cre­ate Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Sur­re­al Paint­ings

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Some of the First Words Ever Spo­ken on Film .… and They’re Saucy Ones (1929)

An Ear­ly Ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse Enters the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2024: Enjoy Clas­sic Works by Vir­ginia Woolf, Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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